Nigerian real estate data analytics platform Estate Intel announces a US$500k pre-seed funding round which has since expanded into several other African nations.
Estate Intel started as a real estate blog in 2016 with the goal of highlighting important building projects in Nigeria. Since then, it has grown into the continent’s largest source of real estate data, with information on historical rental, sale, and vacancy data for thousands of properties.
This information enables investors and advisors to understand Africa’s murky real estate market better.
A few weeks ago, Estate Intel was one of sixty black-founded firms from across Africa selected for the second cohort of Google for Startups Black Founders Fund (BFF) for Africa, securing up to US$100,000 in equity-free capital and support to enable it to scale.
This has driven the company to reveal its pre-seed round, banked last year and led by MetaProp. Estate Intel used the US$500k in funding to broaden the scope of its data footprint, which was previously mostly based in Nigeria, to cover additional African nations like Kenya, Zambia, the Ivory Coast, Morocco, and Ghana.
The company has also successfully combined data into its recently updated educational market dashboards, which give companies in the real estate and construction industries the option to subscribe. These market dashboards track the size of the residential, commercial, and retail real estate markets as well as rent and sale prices. They also tell you about upcoming and ongoing projects, and they cover more than 40 areas in the biggest cities in Africa.
Additionally, the business recently opened the public beta for Vesper, a new product extension. Vesper is an automated real estate advisor that uses data to guide personal property investments for the average African by giving reliable data for personal property investment advice and quick property value estimates.“The fundraising has helped us expand our data coverage in new cities like Nairobi, Abidjan, Lusaka, and Casablanca, in addition to the Nigerian and Ghanaian cities we are already active in,” said Dolapo Omidire, founder and CEO of Estate Intel.
“For the Google program, we are particularly excited about what Google Cloud tools and support mean for our real estate dashboards, mapping, and Vesper. We are truly committed to using data and insights to make it easier for real estate and construction companies doing business in Africa to thrive.
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Estate Intel accepted in Google’s Black Founders Fund
The Google Black Founders Fund accepted Estate Intel, in which the announcement was made on Tuesday, September 6, 2022.
The capital comes with access to the best of Google—people, products, and processes—as well as up to $100K in equity-free cash and an additional $200K in Google Cloud Credits. This program will help Estate Intel move faster in the real estate technology field toward its goal of making real estate data in Africa more open. Eight months ago, Estate Intel was able to raise about $500,000 in a pre-seed round of venture capital funding, which MetaProp led
.
According to Google, “If we want technology to work for everyone, it needs to be built by everyone.” Black business owners in Africa have a hard time getting the networks and money they need to grow their businesses. In 2020, with less than 0.5% of global venture capital (VC) funding going to black-led startups, Google announced the Black Founders Fund and had since deployed $20M in funding to founders across the US, Europe, Africa, and Brazil. “To help investors and advisors make sense of Africa’s confusing real estate market, the Estate Intel platform provides historical rental and sale price information as well as vacancy data for hundreds of properties across the continent.
To help investors and advisors make sense of Africa’s confusing real estate market, the Estate Intel platform provides historical rental and sale price information and vacancy data for hundreds of properties across the continent.
For the second edition, Google announced it would boost its commitment with an additional US$1 million in funding and support 10 more founders this year. Fifty founders were given equity-free funding last October.
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Each of the chosen businesses will get support in the form of a six-month training program, which will give them access to a network of mentors to help them overcome problems that are particular to them. Additionally, they will participate in specialized workshops, support groups, and community-building activities. Along with up to US$250,000 in Google Cloud credit, the 60 grantees will also receive non-dilutive prizes of between US$50,000 and US$100,000.
Five are from South Africa – Agrikool, CreditAIs, Mapha, Rekisa, and Technovera – and four from Uganda – ClinicPesa, Easy Matatu, Eversend, and Xente. Cameroon (Bee, COVA, and Healthlane) and Ghana (Built, KUDIGO, and Zuberi) each have three grantees; Ethiopia has two (Garri Logistics and ZayRide), and Botswana (Brastorne) and Senegal (Cauri Money) have one selected startup each.
Twelve are from Kenya: Ajua, BuuPass, DohYangu, FlexPay, Keep IT Cool, Leja, Solutech, Synnefa, TIBU Health, TopUp Mama, Zanifu, and Zuri Health. Another six are from Rwanda, in the form of Bailport, BAG Innovation, Exuus, Kapsule, PesaChoice, and Pindo.
“Africa is a diverse continent with massive opportunity, but the continent is faced with the challenge of limited diversity in venture capital funding flow.” We hope that the Black Founders Fund programme will “We will be able to bridge the gap of disproportionate funding between expat startups over local and black-led companies,” said Folarin Aiyegbusi, head of the startup ecosystem for Sub-Saharan Africa at Google.